Project Gotham Racing 3 (PGR3)

So I thought it was about time I started to share my thoughts on the range of games that I own for the 360 at the moment. First under the spotlight is Project Gotham Racing 3 (PGR3).

I’ve been a fan of the PGR series since its first incarnation as Metropolis Street Racer on the Dreamcast. Back in the Dreamcast days, MSR was a breath of fresh air as a racing game. The thing that made it different was that it was all about how you raced and not just whether you won or not. The introduction of the Kudos system was a stroke of genius. You scored points for driving with style, and for being in control of your car. The cleaner your driving was, the more kudos you got. The more kudos you attained, the greater the choice of cars available to you. The more difficult the car to drive, the more kudos you received for driving it well, and so on.

PGR2 was the next time I encountered the series, on the XBox (it was an XBox exclusive title). Once again I was gripped by the need to drive cleanly, yet fast. I loved PGR2, and XBox Live just served to make the game even better. Move into the next-generation (surely this is now the current generation) of gaming, and with the launch of the XBox 360 comes another installment in the PGR series in PGR3.

Utilising the power of the 360, PGR3 screams onto the screen with amazing graphics (especially in High Definition) and has the sound to match. If you’re using a Ferrari F50GT then that’s what the car sounds like. Drive a TVR Sagaris and it sounds just like a TVR Sagaris. The graphics look incredible, and it’s the little touches that have made all the difference. The biggest change comes in the way of reflections. I remember reading a few years ago that reflections on most games were done using a dummy reflection model (the example was that for a aprticular racing game every reflection on the car was from a picture of a house that had been squashed and then laid over the car model). The reflections in PGR3 are done real time, and reflect exactly what you’re looking at. Take a car out into Las Vegas at night and you can see the reflection of individual light bulbs! Reflections of the cars next to you also build the sense of realism. The new in-car mode is incredible (although I do find it far too difficult to play in this view). It actually feels like you’re sat in the car, and I’ve never experienced the sense of speed that you get from this view in a game before.

The old favourite game modes are back such as cone challenge (slalom between a number of cones within a given time and score a set amount of Kudos or better to receive your medal) and of course good old fashioned street racing. One of the newer modes is quite refreshing too. In Time vs. Kudos mode, everytime Kudos is earned for driving and the like it stays on your screen waiting to be banked (perform another move before it is banked and earn a combo bonus – rack these up in a big way for huge bonuses). Whilst the kudos is waiting to be banked the clock stops. The more kudos you earn, the less of the precious little you have gets used, and therefore you can finish the race before the time runs out only be performing huge combos and sliding round every corner.

The offline career mode allows you to progress through 5 levels of difficulty starting with the Steel cup (where you can pretty much crash in every corner and you’ll still win) through to the platinum cup (where you have to be absolutely perfect through every corner and still get that little bit of luck – this is a serious challenge). The rewards are greater as you get into the higher levels, although money is never difficult to come by.

Unfortunately there is a downside to this game, but it isn’t the games fault. The much loved XBox Live implementation is great, and it’s very easy to find other racers to pit your skills against. However this is where problems are caused. The biggest gripe I have with this game is the community. There are far too many players on Live that will happily wish people “good luck” before the start of a race, and request “no bumping please” (which sounds great when your fellow players are all French but speaking English!) and then happily ram you out of the way in the first corner and drive off laughing. Perhaps the way forward in Live is to turn off collisions, however this then means that you cannot progress up the online leagues as you cannot have a ranked race with no collisions.

So my overall verdict? The game is awesome and builds on the best things from the PGR series (it still has that slightly more arcade feel to it than the Gran Turismo series on the Playstation and I think PGR3 is just slightly ahead of GT4 in terms of gameplay whilst being streets ahead in terms of looks). The handling of the cars is spot on and the physics of each car feel just different enough that you have to remember which car you’re currently driving. The online implementation (community aside) is excellent and the idea of Gotham TV is a great one (save the best online races centrally and then allow anyone to log in and view them). There is also the promise in the future (if the pre-launch hype is to be believed) that there will be centrally organised competitions online, with real-life prizes for the best of the best.

All in all PGR3 builds on a great heritage in the PGR and MSR series, and given that it is a launch title, probably doesn’t push the XBox 360 that hard. If this is the case then I’m really looking forward to seeing PGR4 roll out of the garage.